Muffled Screams and Gun Shots
by FanGirlFreak16
Summary: I had two things on my mind. The screams accompanied with gunshots that rang throughout the entire school and Michael's whereabouts. I've looked for him outside of the school, but haven't been able to find him in the sea of panic induced teenagers. This all leaves me wondering if Michael was another unfortunate soul to fall prey to yet another school shooter.


**Warning: This story contains the topic of school shootings, panic attacks, sensory overload, and homosexual couples. If any of these subjects will trigger/offend you, please do not continue on with this story.**

Alarms didn't run frequently, but when they did it was usually only for fire or tornado drills. Our school was fairly dull, not much drama came about other than girls swooning over upper class men. I mean, we're just a small school in New Jersey. You never expect anything bad to happen to you. We're barely even on the map of New Jersey, so the thought of anything remotely bad happening in our high school was at a minimum percentage.

Rich had been looking over my shoulder, peering down at my biology answers, having not done the homework the previous night as he should have. When I prompted the question as to why he didn't have them done in the first place, I was given a sheepish look along with the excuse of, "I completely forgot about it,". Of course, I probably should have turned around and said no, and had it been anyone but Rich, Jake, Christine, Brooke, Chloe, Jenna, or Michael, I would have. However, this was Rich, someone who was within my friend group, so he merely got a tap on the wrist before being presented with my answers.

"How are you going to dissect a frog at this rate? You barely even know the parts." I scolded. He shrugged his shoulders as he continued to write down the answers.

"Guess I'm gonna have to study this paper extra hard." Was his simple reply. A part of me scoffed, a hostile part that the Squip had managed to leave behind. I had definitely become more outspoken and reactive after the entire ordeal, on some good notes, and on some rather bad ones. Before the entire Squip incident, I had never, and I mean never, snapped at Michael before. Ever since, however, snapping at him happened more frequently than I would like to admit. Some he would retaliate back on.

Others, he was rather silent.

"Have...you and Michael been...y'know...ok?" Rich suddenly asked in a tone that sounded rather hesitant. His question caught me by surprise, and I nearly fell out of my chair. My relationship with Michael since the entire incident had been rather strained, partially due to my lashing out and partially from broken trust that we've tried to mend time and time again. Nothing would be the same, that was rather evident, but we were trying to salvage whatever we could.

Especially since I had begun to realize some...deeper feelings towards him.

"W-Why wouldn't we be?" I chuckled nervously. Honestly, Rich and Christine were probably the two most observant of the friend group which meant that hiding our troubles from them proved to be no easy task. I knew asking that question to Rich was stupid, and he confirmed my stupidity with a roll of his eyes.

"Don't act stupid with me, tall ass. You know exactly what I'm talking about!" He snapped, eyes abandoning the biology paper that was crucial to his grade, pencil frozen in place mid answer. "We're all worried," Rich said in a quieter and calmer tone. "We just want to make sure that both of you are doing alright. We don't want your guys' relationship to die because of the stupid Squip." Rich knew all about the possibilities about losing friendships over that damned oblong pill. He had had it for well over a year and had lost many relationships that were beyond fixing from words said and actions done. Michael and I had been friends since preschool. Our friendship couldn't be thrown away because of a winter green tic-tac.

"We're still friends," I said with some hesitation, "some things are just...I don't know...tense between us. But we're still getting better!" By this time, Rich was well on his way to going back to rewrite answers from my paper onto his own. It was kind of odd. Just a few months ago, Rich was my bully, my tormentor, the reason why I was afraid to go to school; all of a sudden, we're best buddies, as if we haven't a past to start off of. Same with Jenna, Brooke, Christine, Chloe, and Jake. They were all the popular kids who would spread rumors about us, save for Christine.

Rich's mouth opened to speak, but he was abruptly cut off from the sounding of the bell ringing twice, an indication that an announcement was about to be made. Of course, we all thought this to be the announcing of cancelled practices such as soccer or baseball since the fields were clearly flooded from the down pouring rain that hadn't ceased to stop since the beginning of the week, Monday. Everybody was more than ecstatic to be out of school tomorrow and Sunday.

Although we all had our likely suspicions, the announcements quickly debunked any of my ideas and any feelings of safety I had left.

 _"There is an armed man roaming about the west wing of the high school near the chemistry room."_

With that single announcement, the room was plunged into absolute chaos.

Girls started crying, boys grabbed at scissors and started to quickly drag girls out of the room and towards the nearest exit while others opted to jumping out the window. However, some girls were braver than boys.

I, however?

I was frozen to my place.

I could tell that Rich was waving in front of my face, screaming at me to move, but I just couldn't.

Only until he grabbed my arm and started running did I realize the severity of the situation and what was truly happening. I'm not sure which exit Rich was set on finding, but I know we wandered the halls among other frightened students for all of two minutes before the first gun shot had rang out among the school.

Some kids ducked, others screamed, but once we realized that the gunshot hadn't rung in our general area, we were all quicker to make our escape.

I don't know where we exited, it's all a blur to me, truly, but we exited without much time of the announcement being first made. Policemen, firefighters, EMTs, and others with any vast knowledge of the medical field stood outside while many policemen ran inside, attempting to find the shooter.

Rich's hand still gripped my arm, even after we were out of the building. Gunshots could be heard outside of the building, only worsening my tremulous state. Rich's hand came across my face in a quick and harsh manner, snapping me back into the cold hard reality we were facing. "Snap out of it man!" He screamed at me, drawing a minimal amount of attention to ourselves. Lots of others were focused on finding their friends to make sure they had made it out alright.

"Michael!" I started screaming, hoping that he had made it out here. "Michael Mell!" I screamed louder, trying to yank myself free of Rich's strong hold. His grip didn't budge once. Oxygen began passing past my lips in a rather frantic fit, but whether any of it entered my lungs or not was questionable. "Michael!"

"Dude!" Rich yelled at me, drawing me in for a hug that left his face buried in my chest. "You need to breathe!"

Knowing that you need to do something versus whether or not the deed can actually be accomplished are two entirely different conundrums that often coincide. "Michael has chemistry this period." I manage to breathe out. I can feel Rich tense in a final realization of my frenzy.

What had the woman said?

 _"There is an armed man roaming about the west wing of the high school near the chemistry room."_

 _"_ He's going to be fine," Rich says in a false sense of security whether to comfort himself or me, I wasn't sure. "Michael's strong...he's smart...he's gonna come out and be fine and both of you will go out and get slushies the minute you both can because that's what you guys _always_ do, and that can't ever change."

 _Unless he's dead._

The thought, although I already knew it to be a possibility, sent my mind rushing even further out of control. I pulled clean out of Rich's grip and began to run about the school parking lot. My first initial reaction was to run towards Michael's red P.T. Cruiser. I yanked the door open and threw myself into the driver's seat, not intending on driving anywhere. I rummage through his console and glove department, wondering if he had left his phone in there. The teachers within each class had caught him on it one time too many and threatened to give him detention if he so much placed his headphones back over his ears, which wasn't a help to Michael's rather easily triggered sensory overload.

Much to my frustration, I found his red and blue cased phone within his glove department, several cracks running down the screen from his panic attack in the bathroom at Rich's party. In Michael's hazy mind, he had admitted, he threw his phone down against the tiled floor.

"Fuck." I muttered underneath my breath before tossing it back in the glove department, not caring to shut it. I barely remembered to shut the car door while exiting, but I managed to slam it shut at last minute before running back towards the crowd of hyperventilating, crying, and panic induced teenagers.

In my craze, I didn't recognize the cop car driving towards me from the side.

Despite noticing at last minute, I was able to duck away before receiving any injury, but not without the cop yelling out at me whilst he continued to drive closer to the scene.

With hands cupped around my mouth, I bellowed out over the ever growing hysteria that the damned fool with a gun had created. "Micha!" I wasn't expecting a response back. I don't know what I did expect, if I'm being honest. Perhaps it was some assortment of security for people to at least know who I was looking for. Maybe if they saw him, they would send him my way.

My hearing was clouded over from others' frantic yells, cries, and the not so subtle gunshots that rang out. Whether they were from the intruder or the police, no one was really true. I can assure you, however, that mostly everyone was rooting for it to be the latter rather than the former.

The world was spinning in the full on craze that surrounded me and hundreds of other fourteen through eighteen year olds. I placed my hands over my ears to help make the screaming, the gunshots, and the ringing to go away, but it was just as loud as before. Tears began to streak down my cheeks in fear and premature mourning for my supposedly dead best-friend. I closed my eyes as the tears came on stronger and stronger before violent sobs began to wrack through my body. My legs could no longer support me, and I sunk down to my knees, eyes drawn shut tightly, sobs pouring out of my throat, and hands covering my ears.

 _You're never going to see him again,_ said a little voice. _You fucked up. Now you'll never be able to tell him how you truly feel._ Those thoughts only made the sobs come out faster and stronger.

So much so that the surrounding world was drowned out within my own sorrow.

"Miah!"

A voice was able to break itself through the cloudy mess that was my head. However, I refused to look up. It was probably some concerned student or a friend, but I honestly couldn't bring myself to care. If it wasn't Michael, it didn't matter.

"Jeremiah!"

That was enough to catch my attention. No one really called me Jeremiah, hell, no one really called me Miah either except for...

I willed myself to look up, eyes glossed over with a flood of tears. The sight that was running towards me was enough to make me spring up to my feet and run in its direction. I ran so fast. Faster than I had moved to get out of the building in the first place. When I was close enough, I practically threw myself at the boy, legs wrapping around his waist and arms wrapping around his neck, burying my face in the crook of his neck. He had stumbled back a bit, on account of me being taller than him, but otherwise withheld his stance as we sobbed together, the overwhelming fear finally overflowing and bubbling out.

"Michael!" I sobbed into his neck. I clinged to his shirt as he did to me. "I thought you got shot!" All he did was shush me as he, too, cried into my neck. Without thinking clearly, I removed my arms from around his neck and placed my hands against his cheeks, bringing him in close for a kiss that wasn't up for debate.

I was shocked when he didn't pull away or protest.

"Michael, Jeremy!" A breakage of our kiss directed us to the voices of Chloe, Jenna, Brooke, and Christine. It would later be revealed to us that Rich was able to find Jake. There was so much relief to us to find that the entirety of our friend group had, for the most part, escaped unscathed, aside from Michael's sprained ankle.

"How'd you get out?" Christine asked with tear marks on her face. "I heard the intruder entered the chemistry room. Several kids were shot."

Michael paled at the question. "Yeah," He answered quietly, "I saw it," With that short answer, the rest took a step back from Michael to give him some space whereas I refused to let go of my red clad best-friend. He let out a short bitter laugh. "I suppose being invisible was a perk this time. But I, uh...hid in the closet that holds all the beakers. I broke a few trying to get in, but I don't think the school will make me pay too much for replacements." No one dared ask further questions. From the glint in Michael's chocolate eyes we could all tell that he preferred to keep the things he saw in a locked vault of attempted suppressed memories.

 **Let me know if you guys would like to see a second chapter from Michael's point of view!**


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